Writing is not my full time job. In my main job, I am a scientist at the
NASAJohn Glenn Research Center,where I work on Mars missions and on developing advanced concepts and technology for future space missions.

An especially fun project was working with a bunch of
physicists and physicist/SF-writers at a NASA workshop on Faster than Light Travel. One result of this was that we determined that cosmic wormholes could have net negative mass. This paper was so interesting that the University of California put out a press release about it! I was featured in Discover
magazine article about faster than light travel; the article is
available from Findarticles.com,
and you can also read my comments
about the article.

Another project I spent a lot of time working on is
developing was laser power beaming to power spacecraft. You can read a
brief overview.

I was widely quoted in newspapers ranging from the New
York Times to Der
Spiegel on the subject of interstellar flight in the news, as
a result of the presentations that I made at the symposium on
Interstellar Flight and Generation Starships at the February AAAS
meeting. Articles.